it's for certain
I never thought I'd last
never thought the sea would try

it's for certain
you can tie me to the mast
goodbye to all the land and lies
and when all the stars have gone out
they won't fall, you can hear them crying
and when all the stars have gone out
they're not gone, you can hear them dying
and it say it's enough

When he stood before her, he swore that he could hear the child inside of her, their child. He knelt on the floor at her feet silently, his arms wrapped around her legs and his head resting on her lap. Face turned to hers; he wept holding her fingers to his lips.

And they would lull the baby to sleep in a huge rocking chair like the one that his mother had used on her first four children but not her fifth. The child held nestled to its mother's breast, swaddled in soft blankets. She cried with him, their tears falling onto his cheeks.

Pacey came to sit beside her on the couch. Looking into her eyes, he supposed she had been crying for hours. It was something he could never understand, and probably would never understand. That feeling deep down inside you that you know is a child, but you're not exactly sure why. Or if.

"I didn't know, Pacey. I didn't even think it was really possible..." She gulped back further tears.

He stared at her, confused. "What do you mean? How could you not have? I mean..."

"I haven't had it in years. Not since I... since I really started using. So, I just--" She turned her eyes to the floor.

He put both hands on her face. "It doesn't matter. We know now and we can deal with this and start making plans now. All that matters is that we love each other." He trailed his palm down her chest until it rested on her belly. "And that we'll love our child." The words were like punctuation. With both of her hands under his, he held them to his heart and looked around the room before returning his gaze to hers. "Jo? Will you please, please marry me?"

He had always hoped, with this tiny, romantic place in his heart, that if ever he made a proposal it would be less impromptu and more perfect, without the murmur of Jerry Springer overhead and the shuffle of bathrobe-clad patients nearby. But this would have to do. Their lives lay before them like a long, newly-tarred road.

He stared into her reddened eyes and waited for her answer.

"Pacey, are you sure about this? Because-- Because I know things seem less awful in this moment, but what if... and... I mean..."

"Shhh...," he put his fingers to her lips and wiped at her tears. "If we go through life thinking what if and but, we'll never allow ourselves to live. I knew that before I even saw you again. Everyday I thought, what if I hadn't let her push me away? What if I hadn't let her leave? And it did me no good. Our lives would have been very different if things hadn't been exactly as they are now. And now is the only thing that has any importance. Now I love you. Now you carry our baby. Now I want you to marry me. Will you marry me? We have so much to live for now."

And they stood in front of an officiator, her head thrown back and stars in their eyes, their love sealed forever. He wore a dark suit cuffed at the ankles and his shoes shone with the brightness of polished chrome. No words could describe the way that she looked, her perfect beauty. Her dark skin contrasting the ice-blue white of her dress, oak brown hair floating beneath a tulled veil.

Her answer was barely that. Not even a whisper, the lowest wisp of a syllable, hardly a word at all. It was more than Pacey needed to hear, more than enough. He gathered her into his arms and kissed her soft, wet, salt-covered lips. They were old and happy, their home worn in from children and grandchildren. He stood at the entrance of their bedroom and looked serenely towards their bed, their home. One shared life, one shared bed, one shared love, one shared knowledge that they had conquered every dragon that chased them and completed a life together.

"Everything is going to be perfect from now on baby, I promise. We're going to be perfect." And he believed that with every living cell in his body.

Sitting beside her at the huge wooden desk of one of her doctors, they were told that none of this was going to be easy for Joey. She would have to discontinue her drug therapy immediately for the safety of the fetus and the strain could be a lot to ask of a woman whose body and mental states were so fragile. The doctor warned that a pregnancy this advanced could have already suffered major blows.

Pacey stared disbelieving. He knew in his heart that there was nothing wrong now that they couldn't handle. Everything would be perfect. It had to be. There wasn't a whole lot more that either of them would be able to take. The hospital would need to extend Joey's stay with them even though she was scheduled for release in a matter of days. She would need the extra therapy and time to deal with her condition. A controlled environment that she trusted implicitly was of the most importance. Pacey began to argue, but Joey agreed.

"Pacey, the doctor is right. The drug therapy has made all of the difference this time out. It equalizes me and it allows me to sleep, and I've needed this sleep. I should stay here the extra month, they can take care of me."

"I can take care of you, Jo..."

"I know you can, baby... but we'll have the rest of our lives for that. Now, we need the help. They are the only ones who can understand."

"Please understand, Pacey. We only want the best for Joey and this is the best thing for her. We're not trying to keep her away from you. In fact, we can probably work out a more lenient visiting schedule for the two of you. But with everything that she's gone through lately, we think it would be in both of your best interests to keep a tighter eye on her right now. Until we can all be sure that she's ready to be on the outside." The doctor spoke slowly, Pacey knew in his heart that he was probably right.

He nodded weakly.

"Joey, do you have a gynecologist that you're happy with, or would you like us to find one for you? We should set up an appointment as soon as possible."

"You get me one, okay?" Her exhausted voice.

"That's fine. And Pacey, will you be able to make yourself available to take Joey to these appointments?"

"Absolutely doctor, thank you."

"We simply want to assure that the two of you will be able to get through this without relapse. How are you feeling, Joey?"

"I'm all right, Dr. Simmons. My mind is still swimming around all of this, but I'm starting to believe that we can actually do it."

Pacey wanted to dance around the room at her words, the first honestly positive turn she had made on her pregnancy. Instead, he rested his hand atop hers and squeezed lightly until she turned her eyes to his. She was smiling.

"That's good to hear. Now why don't you go and get some rest, we'll finish up here another time. I'll call you with an appointment time with the obstetrician, Pacey. It will be within the next few days, I'm sure." The doctor stood and Pacey shook his hand as Joey made for the door.

When they reached the corridor, she turned into him as if looking for more of his approval, looking for more of his strength of conviction. Joey's arms reached around his neck and she clutched at him, holding on for dear life. "Please make this work, Pacey. I'm not sure how much more of me I have left..."

He could only hold onto to her and press his hands into her back, his lips trailing kisses across her face.

His apartment was the emptiest place in the entire world when he went back to it alone. Even though she had stayed with him for some time, it had still remained solely his even though he had tried to make it feel like hers as well, but the few things that she had weren't enough to make it feel like her. And her smell had long since dissipated into the vapor, the only thing he could smell on entrance were his own cigarettes. He sat at the table in the front room, pulling an almost empty pack from his shirt pocket. Clearly, he would have to stop smoking if they were to have a child in this house.

Lighting up a smoke, he inhaled with a depth that reminded him that everything was going to change so rapidly from here on in. They would have to get a larger place, maybe it was finally time for him to sell some of his vested options and buy a house. Should they move to the suburbs, somewhere closer to his work in the South Bay? Joey would never want to leave the city, no matter how many negative connotations it would always hold. He pulled the newspaper from his bag and opened it to the real estate section, glossing over the listings. Houses were a fortune in San Francisco, and the burgeoning tech industry didn't help that much. But there were places that they would be able to afford. Pacey's credit was good and he was a low-risk candidate for a mortgage loan.

It was all right that their first home wouldn't be the sprawling suburban house that he'd dreamt that he would have a family in. It amazed him that these thoughts even took him, a year ago he had never even really thought that he would ever have a family, let alone with Josephine Potter, the one true love of his life. A year ago, he never would have believed he would ever see her again. A year ago he had almost made himself forget how much he missed her.

He picked up the phone and dialed the rehabilitation facility, asking for Joey when the front desk nurse answered. There was soft hold music on line as they patched his call through to her room.

"Hello?"

"Hey, babe. It's me..."

"You just left..." He could hear her smiling on the other end.

"I know, but I already missed you. How does a loft in South Park sound?" He circled the listing with a pink highlighter.

"Pacey, you're already looking at apartments? You're crazy, you know that?"

"Jo, I want you to help me make a real home for our child and there's no way that we can do it here... this place is too small for us to even have a new baby in, I don't want our child's first days lived out in the living room of my apartment. So I figured we should start looking as soon as we could. And lo and behold, I had the paper in my bag."

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

"I have never been this sure about anything in my entire life." That was more than the truth, the conviction with which he was starting to feel everything was unlike anything had ever felt in his total existence. Up to now, he thought he would never feel anything as strongly as he did at sixteen, not even in the moment when he found her again had he felt that power. But now, it was as if that was nothing in comparison to the lightness and strength of his heart now.

"Whatever you want, then. I trust you." Her voice had a slight unsteadiness to it that Pacey heard loudly.

"Are you all right, Jo?"

"Yeah... I'm just tired and scared. Everything is going to be all right though, I know that. It's just really frightening... I haven't felt like this in years. I don't feel like a junkie anymore and I'm afraid that by quitting the drugs that they've been giving me since the detox, I'm going to start wanting to get high again. Maybe the only reason that I've felt this good and I've gotten my mind back is because I've been taking their pills. Maybe under all of that, I'm still just a junkie. I shouldn't be having this kid, and I shouldn't be toying with the idea of being a human being." She took a long, stuttering breath.

"Jesus, Jo... you've always been a human being, you just traveled the wrong path for a long time. But, baby... everything is going to be all right now. You have the strength to do anything you want and you have me, and I love you more than life itself."

"I know... I love you too, Pace. I just keep telling myself all those things, eventually I'll believe them," she paused for a moment and there was a comforting silence. "Look, I should go, I need to get to private. I'll talk to you tomorrow, okay?"

"Only if I can wait that long..." He worried horribly about her. There were moments when it seemed that she was strong and happy, but then she fell into times like this where she questioned herself too much and she questioned them. Pacey so wanted to just hold her and convince her that the bad times were truly behind them.

"Stop worrying about me, I'm okay. Love you..."

When he hung up the phone, he lacked the constance he felt when he could hear her voice. It was probably unhealthy, the amount of him that she took with her when she wasn't right beside him, when even the littlest bit of her body wasn't touching his. He turned his attention back to the newspaper, busily circling housing classifieds and lighting another cigarette, inhaling deeply on the sweet smoke as it filled his lungs.

Two days later, an appointment with a doctor had been firmed up and Joey's therapist called him with the information. There were so many questions that Pacey wanted to ask him even though he knew that the doctor couldn't give him too much information, all he ever got from any of the doctors was tiny, impersonal updates. He needed so much more; he needed to know what they really thought.

"Doctor, I realize that this is inappropriate, but I have to ask anyway... Is Joey going to be able to handle this pregnancy? I'm very worried about her, about all of this. Has she said anything that would make you think that she won't?"

The doctor's heavy breath sounded through the phone line as he paused.

"You're not putting me on the spot, but there isn't much I can tell you. Everything that's said between us is confidential, but I can say that Joey seems to have put a lot of the past behind her and she's looking forward to her future. She seems very hopeful and has a renewed confidence. Were I you, I would be more concerned for her physical health than her mental. We've tried to prepare her for anything that could happen, but with cases such as these, it's difficult to say what the outcome of her pregnancy might be. Talk to the obstetrician when you take Joey there, she's an extremely good doctor, she can outline for you all of the risks involved here. And take care of Joey, if anything goes wrong, she is going to need you to be very strong for her. You may want to talk to someone yourself, it could be hard for both of you."

Pacey was taken aback by the doctor's words. Sure, he knew that there were some risks, but he had always believed, naively maybe, that they were things that they would be able to overcome through their love for each other and the child that grew inside her. It hadn't crossed his mind that there could be any physical risks or that the child had been endangered in any way. It simply hadn't dawned on him. Perhaps that was why Joey was so nervous.

She didn't doubt their love, she doubted being capable of carrying and giving birth to a healthy child.

"Thank you," he whispered in a staggering tone.

"Take care of yourself, Pacey. We'll see you on Thursday when you bring Joey back from the doctor's."

"Okay, uhhhh... bye."

When he hung up the phone, his hands were shaking again. He paced back and forth through his small cubicle, incapable of returning to his task. He did need to talk to someone; he had been keeping all of this inside him for so long. The only person on earth that knew anything about him at all was his co-worker, Tom, and Pacey didn't feel close enough to him to give him any detail about his life. Everything he's ever said to him was purely to help get through the trying times when Pacey would be away from work. He had no friends to support him now, and he needed them so badly. He couldn't talk to Joey about this yet.

She had been throwing up all morning the day that he brought her to the medical building on Post Street. They had pulled over more than once so she could empty her stomach on the side of the road, he was surprised that she had anything left inside her. Her body shook and she was pale as a sheet. Finally arriving at the doctor's office, they sat in the waiting room as Pacey filled out her forms and she bent her head towards the floor.

A white-uniformed nurse called her name from the doorway; Pacey stood, pulling Joey gently to her feet. He walked with her towards the nurse who smiled at them.

"Come with me, Miss Potter. I've got you." She headed Pacey off. "We'll call you back in after her examination, sir."

Joey turned back to him shaking her head. "Can he please stay with me, Ma'am... I really need him with me." The desperation clung to her trembling voice.

"It'll be fine, honey..." The nurse reassured. "Your husband will be right here and we'll call for him in just a few moments. Come with me, the doctor is ready to see you."

He sunk back into his seat and nodded towards her to go. "I'll be right here, babe..." She disappeared into the exam rooms.

There were few people waiting beside him; mostly happy, pregnant women and their suburban-type, perfect husbands. Although he had never put thought into what people made of him, he wondered what the pitiful looks on their faces meant when they looked towards the clean-cut Pacey and his ragged "wife," thin and sad and dressed in worn black. Poor Joey, alone in the office, he knew how scared she was. He felt that fear in his very bones.

There was a stack of magazines on the table beside him; he searched through the pile settling on a months-old copy of "Wired." It had to be better than "Parents" and other baby-related issues right now. He flipped through its fingered pages, hardly paying attention to its contents at all. Running through his mind, instead, was an image of Joey on the examination table, the doctor leaning into her to find and confirm everything Joey's therapist had alluded to. In the few days since their conversation, Pacey had acted out every possible situation in his mind and had just about killed himself trying to stay fast to a positive scenario.

But the therapist's voice had been so heavy, so tinged with doom. Pacey felt like he knew something that he wasn't telling. Pacey felt like everything would shatter for them today when the obstetrician looked inside her and found that everything was wrong.

What felt like hours later, the nurse reappeared in the doorway. "Mr. Potter, you can join us now." She had a lovely voice, light like a bird's with a happy lilt. He didn't correct her error in his name, following after her through the doors to a small exam room. Joey sat in a paper gown on the edge of the steel and padded table; the doctor sat in a chair opposite.

Looking around him, there were the things he imagined would be in an office of this type. Posters lined the walls, of cutaway female bodies housing different stages of a baby's growth. He remembered them from high school health classes. The doctor's look was dry, but Pacey saw disapproval behind her stiffened demeanor. She was an extremely tall woman, long, blonde hair twisted into a severe bun behind her head, her clothes covered by a long white lab coat. She stood when he entered, and held out her hand.

"You must be Pacey, Joey's been asking for you."

"Is everything all right, doctor?" Cut to the chase, woman. Can't you see we're freaking out here?

"Well, we're going to be running some tests, and we'll do an ultrasound in a moment. There's nothing I can say definitively yet. We won't know much until all of the tests come back. Joey, why don't you lean back and we'll do the ultrasound, all right? You may stand here, Pacey." He walked around the table laying his hand on Joey's face as he passed and mouthing 'I love you'. The doctor pulled a tall machine topped off by a small monitor over to them.

The nurse lubricated Joey's stomach, which for the first time Pacey could tell was distended, and the doctor flipped on the monitor bringing the wand over Jo's belly. She stared intently at the screen and spoke softly.

"All right... there we go, can you see that Joey? That's the heartbeat." They could hear it faintly from the speaker. She wrote down a note on her chart. "You said you were about four months along? Hmmmm..."

"What's 'Hmmmm...,' Doctor?" Pacey spoke up, he had to know absolutely everything.

"The fetus is small for four months, seems slightly underdeveloped. Nothing to worry about yet... the heartbeat seems strong enough, and that's what we were looking for right now. Like I mentioned earlier, we won't know anything until our tests come back in a few days." The doctor was stiff, she gave away nothing. After a few moments, she turned off the monitor and pushed away her chair. "Let's let Joey get dressed, then we can all meet in my office down the hall." She stood to go, leaving Joey and Pacey alone in the sterile room.

"It's small, Pacey. She said underdeveloped..." Pacey handed her the pile of clothes from the hook on the door.

"She also said that she won't know anything until the tests come back." He would hang on to the positive if it killed him. He would be her rock.

"Are you worried?"

"I'm only worried about you. I just want to you stay strong, babe. No matter what happens, we're together and we're going to get married and live long lives together. I love you, and we'll be fine." Every time he said those words, he started to think they sounded scripted but he meant them more than anything he'd ever uttered in his life. He needed her to understand that. Besides, he truly believed that this time, everything would be fine.

"Come on, get dressed..."

"I'm afraid, Pacey."

Wrapping his arm around her waist, he stood between her legs and cupped the back of her head, holding her to him. "Don't be... we'll work it all out, no matter what anyone tells us."

She finished dressing in silence, the fear still resonating in her eyes. As much as he wanted this child, what he wanted most was Joey. Plain and simple, he needed her to get through all of this; nothing mattered as much as she did. She looked into the small mirror over the sink and smoothed back her hair. They left the room and walked through the corridor to the doctor's office, sitting in the two chairs on their side of the desk.

"I don't want to get your hopes elevated, because you're a very high risk pregnancy, Joey." She wasn't pulling any punches at this point. "Your drug use at the start of the fetus' development has certainly contributed to its low weight at this mark. The shock of rapid detox and the drug therapy since was also not the optimal environment for a developing child. But, the heart rate seems strong enough right now and if we're extremely careful and aware from this point on, you may have a normal pregnancy and a healthy birth. Maybe."

Pacey kept his gaze steady and his hand over Joey's in her lap. He squeezed her fingers firmly when he felt them trembling.

"We have to wait for the test results, before we can know where to go from here. So what I need you to do for us is rest and relax as much as you possibly can and call my office on Tuesday afternoon. We should know more then. I'm very sorry that I can't give you more to go on until then, but I want you to stay hopeful and positive. It's the best thing you can do right now, hope for the best." There were tears in Joey's eyes again, Pacey put an arm across her shoulders and held her tightly. He understood that the doctor was trying to prepare them for the worst while they hoped for good things, but there was a small hint of disapproval in her eyes when she looked at them. It made him feel like he was being set up for a long fall and that maybe they deserved it. They didn't deserve it. All they deserved was their lives back.

They said nothing until the doctor stood, signifying that she had said everything she could.

"Thank you, Dr. Schweitzmann, we'll phone on Tuesday. Thank you." She nodded lightly and walked them to the door. By the time they reached the elevator to the lobby, Joey's body was heaving with heavy sobs. He tried his damnedest to calm her.

"Honey... we can't get this way... we have to be positive. You're getting healthier every day and the baby's heartbeat is strong. You have to be calm and relax... it's going to be fine... It's going to be all right... I love you, baby... please don't cry like this..." He was grasping at straws trying to keep her together.

The car was parked blocks away. They walked through downtown in relative silence, his arm draped over her shoulder and her head in the juncture of his neck. The only sounds were the busy traffic and her quiet crying.

Alone in his apartment again, besought with his own violent thought process. Something pressured him, told him that the hopefulness he tried to convince Joey of was almost empty. He hardly believed in it himself anymore. Doctors usually knew what they were talking about, they wanted to prepare you for the worst thing that could happen but at the same time know everything going in. None of this sounded good. He flashed to the moment when Joey had told him on the phone that she was pregnant and his mind had only circled around good thoughts, negatives didn't exist, and they hadn't even crossed through.

Now, all he could embrace were the negatives. He could never let her see that. She had to believe that he knew they could do this. He didn't know. He didn't know anything. How could two people have such infernally horrible luck? When had he started believing in luck?

He knew he shouldn't call her every time the whim took him, she needed to go about her routine and try to relax, but not knowing precisely what she was doing through the day unnerved him. He paced his apartment and made himself a tall drink. Pacey had never thought that he abused his alcohol but with all the addiction around him, he questioned how much he relied on quick a cocktail to take the edge off. He hardly ever drank just to get drunk anymore, it was only when times had gotten too much for him that he leaned on it to get by. And even then, he knew what he was doing and why.

The alcohol had never been his addiction. He was addicted to her, to everything about her including her terrible neediness.

He went up to see her as he did every Saturday since he'd been able to. It seemed that the therapy sessions had broken through to her and she'd reached a calm place. The nervous shakiness that he'd experienced with her at the Ob/Gyn was all but non-existent. They spent the day on the grounds lying next to each other in the soft grass letting the sun warm their backs and talking positively about the future. Pacey wanted her to be happy. That was all. He said it over and over to her and in his mind.

When he finally crossed the gardens to the parking lot, she watched him go smiling and waving. He missed her more in that moment than he ever had in the years that they had been apart. Did he seem sad to her? He wondered if she could see the waver in his eyes. She had always known him better than he'd known himself.

He doubted himself too much, weighing everything that both doctors had expressed and coming up on the low end of the scale. there was no real preparing himself for something difficult to work through again and he had to be there for her, she needed him to be. No one else would be there for either of them to lean on. Pulling off the highway when his eyes became cloudy with tears, he laid his head on his hands and sobbed. Let it all out Pacey, because this is the last time you can cry.

Go to part 15